One Childhood Drains Another

She looked older somehow. It had only been a few months, but she looked older.

She is 14 and in the eighth grade. I first met her last September when she was eight months pregnant.

Back then, she was hoping for a girl. It turned out to be a boy and she loves him very much.

The father is in prison. Marriage is not being contemplated.

A few weeks ago, she burned herself with an iron to punish herself.

Call her Jennifer.

She had decided against an abortion. According to the law, even girls Jennifer`s age can decide to do whatever they want with their babies.

In reality, however, they almost always do what their parents tell them to. How can they not? Where would they go? What would they do?

``They are babies taking care of babies,`` said Bobbe Friedman, a clinical social worker helping Jennifer.

So Jennifer decided to have her baby and her mother decided Jennifer would give it up for adoption.

``But, later, I decided I wanted to keep it,`` Jennifer said. ``And we both agreed.``

I had asked her in September what made her change her mind.

``Hearing the baby`s heartbeat,`` she said. ``That changed my mind. I know that raising it will be a little hard, but my mother is going to help me.``

And now the baby is three months old and raising it is indeed a little hard.

Jennifer`s mother, who was going to help, is ill. And Jennifer must not only take care of her baby, but her mother and her brothers.

Which is why she no longer goes to school. She takes her brothers to school in the morning and by the time she gets to her own school, she is late and she can`t handle that and so she goes home. She has not attended class since the Christmas break.

Bobbe Friedman has been trying to get Jennifer to finish the eighth grade, so that she can go on to a high school for the performing arts, like on ``Fame,`` and become a singer, which is her dream.

Except that Jennifer finds the eighth grade boring and the baby takes a lot of her time and, well, this is not how she imagined life would be when she was in the arms of her boyfriend and the world was fresh and beautiful.

She has known how babies were made since she was 9 or 10. But she never practiced birth control when she became sexually active at 13.

``I just didn`t think it could happen to me,`` she said.

She has no regrets that she had her baby or that she decided to raise him. ``It`s a little hard raising a kid, but it would be harder giving it up,`` she said. ``Later, it would have hurt.``

This week, she tells me that she will go back to school on Monday. She will graduate in June, she says, and she will go to the arts high school and become a professional singer and everything will be fine.

She is visiting the father in prison on Saturday and will bring the baby for him to see for the first time. She says that when he gets out, he will help support the baby.

``My attitudes and feelings, they go down a lot,`` she says. ``My attitude is a nasty attitude sometimes. I think I can do what I want and I think I can get rewards without sacrificing and I cannot.

``My mother says that to do what I want to do, I have to do what I have to do first.``

I ask her if she ever goes out with her girlfriends, if she ever just goofs around, if she ever just forgets her responsibilities for a day, an hour, a minute.

She thinks about this. ``No,`` she says. ``I never get out of the house. Not really. No.``

And I realize what else is different about her, aside from looking older. Her smile is gone and a world-weary look has replaced it.

And only once in our conversation did the old Jennifer come back.

After she burned herself, which turned out not to be a serious injury, it was decided she should get away from things for a little bit.

So, over Christmas, she left her baby with her mother and visited relatives in the South. When I asked her about it, her face split into a grin and her eyes grew bright.

``It was wonderful,`` she said. ``We just ran around and we talked and I felt, I felt--I felt free.``

And I finally understood what had happened. It is not that she is a bad mother. On the contrary, she loves and cares for her child. And it is not that she has ruined her life. No, she can go back to school and realize all her dreams if she wishes.

But I finally understood what was different. I learned what she had learned on that one week away from home: